Лучшие книги Эндрю Робертса

Первая однотомная биография, написанная после опубликования более тридцати тысяч писем Наполеона Бонапарта, которые заставили историков радикально пересмотреть свои взгляды на его характер и устремления. Наконец-то мы видим великого полководца и государственного деятеля таким, каким он был на самом деле: разносторонним, способным одновременно решать множество проблем человеком с исключительной решимостью и при этом удивительной готовностью прощать и свою неверную супругу Жозефину, и своих политических противников, и даже врагов.

Эндрю Робертс — известный британский историк и биограф, который одинаково хорошо разбирается и в политической, и в военной истории, — посетил 53 из 60 полей сражений Наполеона, обнаружил в архивах важнейшие новые документы и даже совершил долгое путешествие морем на остров Святой Елены. Итогом всей этой работы стала биография, достойная своего героя: авторитетная, проницательная и прекрасно написанная выдающимся специалистом.

Книга известного военного историка Эндрю Робертса, изобилует деталями и подробностями, показывающими в новом свете характеры и логику поведения главных действующих лиц мировой войны с обеих сторон конфликта. Автор, используя уникальные, ранее не публиковавшиеся документы, рассказывает о малоизвестных героях, на поле боя определявших исход сражений, о доблести, отваге и мужестве одних, о подлости и низости других, об ужасах и изуверствах, сделавших эту войну самой кровавой в истории человечества.

Адольф Гитлер и Уинстон Черчиль. Два правителя, стоявших у власти двух столь разных государств. Эпоха правления каждого из них - как бы ее ни оценивали - сыграла определенную роль в дальнейшем развитии Германии и Великобритании - двух непримиримых противников во Второй мировой войне. Что это были за личности? Какими были методы их правления? Какую роль они сыграли в истории своих стран и всего мира в целом?

When we seek an example of great leaders with unalloyed courage, the person who comes to mind is Winston Churchill: the iconic, visionary war leader immune from the consensus of the day, who stood firmly for his beliefs when everyone doubted him. But how did young Winston become Churchill? What gave him the strength to take on the superior force of Nazi Germany when bombs rained on London and so many others had caved? In Churchill, Andrew Roberts gives readers the full and definitive Winston Churchill, from birth to lasting legacy, as personally revealing as it is compulsively readable.

Roberts gained exclusive access to extensive new material: transcripts of War Cabinet meetings, diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs from Churchill's contemporaries. The Royal Family permitted Roberts--in a first for a Churchill biographer--to read the detailed notes taken by King George VI in his diary after his weekly meetings with Churchill during World War II. This treasure trove of access allows Roberts to understand the man in revelatory new ways, and to identify the hidden forces fueling Churchill's legendary drive.

We think of Churchill as a hero who saved civilization from the evils of Nazism and warned of the grave crimes of Soviet communism, but Roberts's masterwork reveals that he has as much to teach us about the challenges leaders face today--and the fundamental values of courage, tenacity, leadership and moral conviction.

Andrew Roberts's Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses who led the West to Victory in WWII tells the story of how four great leaders fought each other over how best to fight Hitler.

During the Second World War the master strategy of the West was shaped by four titanic figures: Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, and their respective military commanders - General Sir Alan Brooke and General George C. Marshall. Each man was tough-willed and strong minded. And each was certain he knew best how to achieve victory.

Drawing on previously unpublished material, including for the first time verbatim reports of Churchill's War Cabinet meetings, Andrew Roberts's acclaimed history recreates with vivid immediacy the fiery debates and political maneuverings, the rebuffs and the charm, the explosive rows and dramatic reconciliations, as the masters and commanders of the Western Alliance fought each other over the best way to fight Adolf Hitler.

George III, Britain's longest-reigning king, has gone down in history as 'the cruellest tyrant of this age' (Thomas Paine, eighteenth century), 'a sovereign who inflicted more profound and enduring injuries upon this country than any other modern English king' (WEH Lecky, nineteenth century), 'one of England's most disastrous kings' (JH Plumb, twentieth century) and as the pompous, camp and sinister monarch of the musical 'Hamilton' (twenty-first century).

Andrew Roberts's magnificent new biography takes entirely the opposite view. It convincingly portrays George as intelligent, benevolent, scrupulously devoted to the constitution of his country and (as head of government as well as head of state) navigating the turbulence of eighteenth-century politics with a strong sense of honour and duty. He was a devoted husband and family man, a great patron of the arts and sciences, keen ('Farmer George') to advance Britain's agricultural capacity and determined that her horizons should be global.

The book gives a detailed, revisionist account of the American War of Independence, amongst other things persuasively taking apart a significant proportion of the Declaration of Independence. In a later war, it shows how George's support for William Pitt was crucial to the battle against Napoleon. And it makes a credible, modern diagnosis of George's terrible malady which robbed him of his mind for the last 10 years of his life - his other main claim to the popular imagination.

Roberts argues that, far from being a tyrant or incompetent, George III was one of our most admirable monarchs. George III shows one of Britain's premier historians at his sparkling best.

Коли на кону постає питання війни і миру, найважливішою постаттю в його розв'язанні стає людина, яка, демонструючи мужність і відвагу, бере на себе всю відповідальність за здолання ворога. Завдяки особистим рисам характеру та державницькому масштабу мислення така людина спроможна вести за собою тисячі і мільйони. Лідер у часи війни не лише сам твердо вірить у перемогу, а й надихає такою впевненістю своїх воїнів та прихильників.

The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating--and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy. Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon--a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of eighteenth-century revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who needed to make the king appear evil in order to achieve their own political aims. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth: George III was in fact a wise, humane, and even enlightened monarch who was beset by talented enemies, debilitating mental illness, incompetent ministers, and disastrous luck. In The Last King of America, Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III's American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch.

At six years of age, Robert Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was sent to a brutal boarding school he likened to “an existence among devils.” By 23, he was a member of the British Parliament. And before his death at age 73 in 1903, he would spend nearly two decades as Britain’s Prime Minister, single-mindedly driving the British Empire to extend its iron grip to five continents. This multiple award-winning biography sheds uncompromising light on Lord Salisbury’s troubled family life, his transformational experiences in Australia, India, and Africa, and his dogged pursuit of political power in the court of Queen Victoria.

Part of the ‘Making History Series’ – ‘Waterloo’ is an exciting retelling of one of the moments that shook the world – Waterloo, one of the truly decisive battles of history.The illustrious ‘Making History Series’, edited by Lisa Jardine and Amanda Foreman, explores an eclectic mix of history's tipping points.In ‘Waterloo’, Roberts provides not only a fizzing account of one of the most significant forty-eight hour periods of all time, but also a startling interrogation into the methodology of history – is it possible to create an accurate picture from a single standpoint? What we can say for certain about the battle is that it ended forever one of the great personal epics. The career of Napoleon was brought to a shuddering halt on the evening of 18 June 1815. Interwoven in the clear-cut narrative are exciting revelations brought to light by recent research: accident rather than design led to the crucial cavalry debacle that lost the battle. Amongst the all-too-human explanation for the blunder that cost Napoleon his throne, Roberts sets the political, strategic and historical scene, and finally shows why Waterloo was such an important historical punctuation mark.The generation after Waterloo saw the birth of the modern era: ghastly as the carnage here was, henceforth the wars of the future were fought with infinitely more ghastly methods of trenches, machine-guns, directed starvation, concentration camps, and aerial bombardment. By the time of the Great War, chivalry was utterly dead. The honour of bright uniform and tangible spirit of ?lan met their final dance at Waterloo.